It was the last day of June and the first day of the new work week when an emergency showed up on my doorstep.
A family member had fallen ill and needed me. I made a few calls, shuffled a few things around, grabbed my keys and headed out the door.
The emergency was fairly minor, and some people would probably not have thought it worth calling urgent. But that didn’t matter, because it was family, and when they call, I answer.
When the water settled, and the emergency ended, I returned to my desk in my New Mexico home.
I sat in my final Zoom meeting for the day, and when it was over, I picked up my cellphone. On Instagram, a friend had shared a photo of a horse in a corral, with the sun waving goodbye as it headed over a mesa. On the horizon lay a blanket of smoke. It made for a beautiful sunset, one I had never seen before.
I continued to turn the digital pages of her story and saw that it was a photo she’d taken while helping a team of volunteers who were providing aid to Navajo residents evacuated by the Oak Ridge Fire.
The photo was magnetic. Days before, I had seen posts about a fire on the Navajo Nation but had assumed it was small and would be handled in no time. But I was wrong: It continued to grow, and by the time I sat down to write this piece, it had consumed nearly 10,000 acres of Navajo land and was 0% contained. A dark plume of smoke could be seen from hundreds of miles away, while the raging hot red flames below it swept across the land.
My first question was “Where is Oak Ridge?” Followed by “How can I help?”
I was slightly embarrassed to realize I hadn’t a clue about where this community was, especially since I’d spent 12 years as a journalist for The Navajo Times and traveled thousands of miles across the reservation for my work. I also grew up on the reservation, and over the years my parents and I cruised thousands of miles to and from nearby border towns and cities.
I turned to Google and found that the fire started near the small town of St. Michaels, a town that, depending on the direction you’re coming from, you reach before you get to Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation. It turns out I had driven through the Oak Ridge area more times than I could remember. Its mountainous terrain and trees reminded me of my own hometown of T’iis NásBąs, the place where cottonwood trees tower over everything in sight.
At that point, I entered a digital wormhole, searching anything and everything associated with the Oak Ridge Fire. The amount of information was overwhelming. I found myself in a state that reminded me of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I did the very same thing: I searched obsessively for answers, all the while knowing that there was no one true answer to the question I was really asking: How can I help?
As a Diné woman, I was inclined to assist. The need to do something was strong. The urge tugged at me and held me down like gravity.
Even though I grew up hundreds of miles from that part of the reservation, it was still home. It was hard to watch the land being engulfed by flames, to hear the crackling of the burning foliage. I wondered how much of it would have been the traditional plants used in ceremony, which are often hard to come by. How much of it was food meant to nourish the livestock? I could picture the residents who lived there herding their cattle while others were taking their sheep and goats out to graze. I pictured Navajo kids hopping on horses, riding freely through thick sand with smiles on their faces.
The urge tugged at me and held me down like gravity.
I thought about the animals and the signs they showed beforehand, indicating that trouble was ahead. How afraid they might have been, and how terrified their owners would have been to lose them.
Like many who live there, I grew up hearing stories about how important the land and animals were to us and to our future as Diné.
Where I was raised was not all that different, even if the two places were hundreds of miles apart.
I was raised to want to help, to know that I needed to help, to find a way to help. The women in my family instilled this in me. My late grandmother helped anyone she could, however she could, by any means she could. My mother is no different; she is often described as someone who would give more than you need, even if it meant she was left with nothing.
As I continued to gain more information about the fire, I felt more and more helpless. I told myself that if I were there, I could help hand out food and comfort elders, listen as folks shared their stories, maybe even get my hands dirty while moving livestock. But I was hundreds of miles away, not nearly close enough to lend a physical hand, far from the embers and the smoke that coated everything within the fire’s reach.
Instead, I watched from my screen amid the comfort of my home away from home.
That evening, I watched a town hall online and then listened to an update on the Navajo radio station KTNN, which was broadcasting updates in the Navajo language.
Before I knew it, I had missed dinner. I could not remember what tasks were left for me to do. The fire, in its own way, had consumed me.
I moved into the kitchen, where I made myself a sandwich. I hopped on my phone and sent a monetary donation to a friend who was out there on the ground, helping her own community and those surrounding it.
I started thinking about what else could be done from afar. I confided in a colleague who happened to be in and around the communities affected that day. They texted me about what they had seen and thought, and we shared our feelings of helplessness. They said something that put things into perspective for me — that if I was feeling this way, how many others, who were also far from home, far from the land, shared the same sentiment?
How many others were watching on screens, scrolling through posts, listening to updates? Those who are not within an arm’s reach are still not alone: We are united through our collective trauma.
I realized that by sharing my experience of helplessness and of fear for my home, I might be helping in my own way — that I could offer comfort to those who are from the communities immediately affected by the fire as well as to those who were in my shoes, who felt home reaching for them but who were not in a position to physically extend a hand.
We often feel guilt and helplessness in circumstances like these. But it’s important to remember that there are still things we can do for each other and for ourselves. We can give offerings and pray for rain, check on our relatives and let them know we care, and we can give whatever we can, wherever we can.
As I started preparing for bed, I found the answer to my question: What can I do to help?
I could write. I had not written a journalistic piece in years: I’d needed time to recover from the pandemic coverage I spent years engaged in, and I vowed never to write about the subject again.
When I woke the next morning, I saw that about 3,000 acres more had gone up in flames. It was another emergency that had showed up at the doorstep of my home. Now my family needed me. And once again, I answered.
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